by Akane Yoshimura

Some beauty contests are divided by the race of the contestants. The Miss Bronze beauty contest acted to empower the blacks and show that “Black is Beautiful”. The Asian American Beauty Contest tries to encourage Asian American women to be proud of their culture. Each contests estimates contestants with different criterions, and the definition of beauty is different. This allows various contestants to discover a place to be confident of themselves. However, are the definitions of beauty truly different?

In our discussion, we saw a popular “standard” of beauty, and a tendency of fitting all the contestants into this standard. Does it make sense to divide the beauty contests if there are no differences in the definitions of beauty they make? I think that if the contests are divided, each contest should look into the particular beauty of each group and celebrate those characteristics, and not try to push them in to the only standard.

So, how can these contests be better? Carolyn Fitzpatrick, author of an article “What to judge on in a beauty pageant,” insists that contestants should be estimated based on well set standards. First, the contestant should be naturally beautiful and contests should not be a place to show what surgeries can do. Second, contestants should be valued by natural smiles and movements, not trained uneasy ones. Third, contestants should have the ability to speak up their opinions. With these three standards, beauty contests will become inspiring events, Fitzpatrick says.

However, it might be difficult to achieve these ideals, because the contests are connected with money. When the ideal of beautiful women are made in contests, female viewers of the contest will feel that they need to be closer to the appearance of the contestants on stage. This makes them buy products to change and “improve” their appearance. Though, it is hard to look like a model, and that will cause the dissatisfaction of women’s own appearance. This leads to consumers spending more money on products which will help them change their appearance, and make a large economic effect in the society. As a result, some contests will keep crowning contestants with made-up beauty.

An egoistic facet seems to be hidden in the beauty contests. The beauty contests would not represent the people of the group, and may not give people confidence of themselves and might keep women dissatisfied of themselves. It seems that beauty contests have changed and are not fully acting to celebrate the different beauties of women but to fit them into a standard.

References

How contestants are judged in the Miss America pageant. (2010). Helium.com. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from http://www.helium.com/items/1790757-miss-america-judging

What to Judge on in a beauty pageant. (2007). Helium.com. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from http://www.helium.com/items/758416-what-to-judge-on-in-a-beauty-pageant

by Yuka Shiokawa

In the chapter “The Color of an Ideal Negro Beauty: Miss Bronze Queen 1961-1968” written by Maxine Leeds Craig, there was a phrase which caught my attention; that is “She said that she hoped for a day when there would not have to be a separate contest for black women”. This was the phrase said by a black woman Stephani Swanigan, who was crowned as Miss Bronze in 1963. She had a light skin tone and middle class background. After she was crowned, she participated in black political activism. She said this phrase when she was asked about her hopes for social change during the contest’s Question-and Answer segment.

It has been almost 50 years since this phrase was said. So I got curious about how far her hope has come to reality. In order to do this, I decided to look at the participants in the Miss USA, which is one of the biggest beauty contests in the United States. It started from 1952, so it overlaps with the time when there were Bronze Queen contests. When I looked at the winners in the past, I noticed that most of the queens are white, especially from 1950s to 1980s. It is not until 1990 the first non-white-woman was crowned. Since then, more black people started to appear in the winners’ pictures. Even the numbers of black winners are way less than that of whites, it can be said that Stephani’s hope has gradually coming true.

However, I noticed one thing after analyzing this result; there are not many Asian winners; I could find only one in the history. Instead, I found the Asian American Beauty Contest, which started from 2006 and its main purpose is “to help Asian America women to increase their cultural awareness throughout the entire country.” As you could see from the year it has started, even today people have different competition depending on races since still there is a strong image that European look is more beautiful and not the others.

After all, people might say they should not judge by their appearance no matter what race they are. Although as long as it is called a “Beauty” contest, it is impossible not to compare them by appearance. What we really need to do from the next generation’s “beauty” contest is not that we do not judge by their appearance but to change the idea of beauty which is more or less controlled by media as European look is better. As a result, we all can create the new image of beauty which has nothing to do with their race, and can finally judge beauty fairly in one single competition.

by Alex Yoo

America is said that it is the most developed country by people. However, in this developed country, there is a problem which has not been solved for long time, racial discrimination. The racial discrimination on blacks has started from the slavery in 17^th century. America imports blacks from Africa and make them work, mostly at plantations or large farms. The freedom was only possible by running away. The northern America bans the slavery first and the southern bans afterward. But, the legacy of the slavery turns white people to have the concept that they are still superior to black people since they had them as slaves, and they start to discriminate against blacks.

As time goes and starts to have the concept of human rights, the government starts to issue laws for the discrimination. The government issues anti-discrimination laws to have less discrimination in the country such as employment discrimination. However, are those laws really working? Do black people now feel like they are living in a country without discrimination? As it is written in Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters, blacks still have different education, occupational status, and different amount of income. For education, expectation on black people at school is lower than whites have and obviously they are graded lower on assignments. Also, whites have more advantages of getting jobs or higher income than blacks have. Even though America has laws for blacks, discrimination is still prevalent.

As we can see, the discrimination cannot be solved only by the government. Then what should we do? The anti-discrimination on black people should be started from people, normal citizens. I believe that no matter what policies or laws the government makes, if the people don’t change themselves, their views on black people, the discrimination will be prevalent as it is currently. First, people should start from kids. To be more specific, kids mostly get influenced by their parents. Kids see and try to copy the thoughts or opinions of their parents. If kids see their parents thinking that they are better than the blacks, they get the notion and turn it into the discrimination like their parents. To prevent it, parents should teach kids that the black people and other races of people are same people. Second, the government should more try making opportunities to get along for blacks and whites. Both of them have their own thoughts on each other, which could be wrong. The government can provide state or city governments with money to make opportunities for blacks and whites get along, and they could start knowing each other and fix the thoughts they used to have. For example, the movie White Men Can’t Jump, there is a scene that blacks and whites playing basketball for the harmony in a city. It turns out to be not satisfying, but I think it would be good to have those kinds of opportunities.

References

Brunner, B. (2007). Infoplease. Retrieved from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmtimeline.html

Federal anti-discrimination laws. (2002). Retrieved from http://www.policyalmanac.org/culture/archive/discrimination.shtml

Wikipedia. (2011, November 24). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Non-Discrimination_Act

by Akane Yoshimura

African American women’s skin color influences their lives considerably. Historically, their skin color has been affecting their self-esteem and socioeconomic achievement. However, it is remarkable to see a change in this trend. The surveys carried in the 1990s show that dark skinned teens are more confident about their appearance than before. The author of chapter two “A Colorstruck World: Skin Tone, Achievement, and Self-Esteem Among African American Women” of the book Shades of Difference assumes a reason for this change which is the Black is Beautiful movement. This happened in the 1960s and is still encouraging black people. The movement denies the thought that black feature is ugly, and prevents black people from erasing their appearance by straightening their hair, lightening their skin, and using contact lenses to change their eye color. The author says that this movement is now reflected in the self-esteem of dark skinned teens.

So, how do we feel this change? I realized that this seems to be something happening somewhere far away, for us in Japan. Sure, blacks are a minority group in the population in Japan, but I think we can feel this change through music and other facts. We are all living in a world which is mutually connected, so we can think about this situation as something related to us. As a same gender, I cannot overlook the fact that some women have to think about their skin color when they are thinking about their marriage. As a same teenager, I hope more girls will be happy about their appearance and not estimate themselves with their skin color. I think this is what the Black is Beautiful Movement is doing. So, if the Black is Beautiful movement is changing the feelings of black people from inside, what can we do as people outside? As the author says, the environment around people will give a big influence to what they think about themselves. In the video we saw in class, a teenage girl said if a student wore suits and had an afro-style hair, it will just not fit. Who made this status? Do we have to fit in to it? I do not want to fully criticize the customs and rules in the society, but after doing the presentation, I have a feeling that if we can get rid of the way we try to fit people (including oneself) in a particular form, we can be more free to accept differences.

References

Verna M. Keith. 2009. “A Colorstruck World: Skin Tone, Achievement, and Self-Esteem Among African American Women” in Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters, edited by Evelyn Nakano Glenn. Stanford, California : Stanford University Press

Wikipedia. Black is Beautiful. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_is_beautiful

by Moraima Flores

As written in Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters, South America has a way of looking at race by appearance and not by ancestry. This may sound liberal in a way that we don’t have to identify ourselves or be identified in “white or black.” We get many more options, and options are always good.

The problems pointed out in the chapter “The Social Consequences of Skin Color in Brazil,” written by Edward Telles, are those of self-identification, racial mixture, color-blindness, and affirmative action. It is difficult to address such sensitive problems, especially in Brazil, where the criteria for “race” isn’t defined, not even addressed.

When is someone negro in Brazil? Well, we could say someone is black because of its ancestry (the one-drop rule), but then probably more than half the population in Brazil would be black; so what would be the point of affirmative action and quotas? Besides, being Brazil a country with such a large population of black, where the culture is more African than European, it wouldn’t be crazy to be proud of being negro, at least that’s what I would think. Why not apply the one-drop rule the other way around then?

When it comes to affirmative action, we need to have an official, legal criterion to tell who is who. Although I don’t agree with the American way of looking at race, I have to admit that at least they do have it clear(er) and well-defined. However, even if Brazil were to do the same, how can we now tell the ancestry? For starters, I don’t even know mine and although I tried keeping track of it once I started feeling curious about it, I found nor my parents, neither my grandparents know. So, again, how do we define who is what?

In class, during the discussion, someone said that the benefits of affirmative action should be given to the less fortunate economically. Japan does that ―maybe not under the label of “affirmative action” but helps young people afford school, and single mothers feed their children―and I think it is a great idea. However, as Telles says, we can’t ignore that “color” is a factor for the huge gap between light-skin Brazilians and dark-skin Brazilians. Yes, we live in the 21^st century, and we all think that discrimination is in the past, that we are all equal, and that we don’t look at someone by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, but is this true? Maybe for people on the top of the social-class pyramid that’s how it works, but I’m not so sure about how less advantaged people think about this.

References

Telles, E. 2009. “The Social Consequences of Skin Color in Brazil.” Pp. 9-24 in Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters, edited by Nakano Glenn, E. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press